


Spinning Into Gold

by Kate_Monster



Category: The OA (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 05:37:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18131651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Monster/pseuds/Kate_Monster
Summary: Homer wakes up and realizes something has changed.





	Spinning Into Gold

I’m smiling before I even open my eyes.

It’s the strangest feeling.

I do remember where I am, after all. I know exactly what I have to face today, and tomorrow, and the day after.

But somehow, in _spite_ of it all, I feel a warmth flooding through me - a pleasant giddiness. It’s something I haven’t felt in a long time. 

I open my eyes. It’s still dark in my cage. A soft purple light bathes the pillow beside me.

I sit up slowly, rubbing my eyes, and look around.  At the other side of my cage, the new girl is tucked up under her blanket against the glass, slumbering peacefully, which gives me a feeling of protective relief. _She’s right there._

I look to my other wall. Rachel’s awake, pacing by the stream. She stops when she catches me staring at her.

“G’morning.”

Rachel nods to me and approaches my wall so she doesn’t have to call out too loudly across the cage. “Morning,” she responds, her voice equally low. I offer her a small smile. We don’t usually do this. “Sleep okay?”

“Yeah,” I say. “You?”

She shrugs. “Been up for a bit.”

“Lot on your mind?”

She shrugs again and slides down against the wall. “Yesterday….”

“Yeah,” I mumble. She doesn’t need to say anything else. I shove my blanket aside and climb to my feet, rubbing my finger reflexively, on the spot where yesterday I felt my old, familiar ring for that brief, final moment. I should be sad that it’s gone forever. Devastated. But I’m not. I stretch my arms up and stumble towards the stream to splash some water on my face.

“You musta been having a good dream,” she whispers.

“Why?” I rub the water into my eyes and clamber up to my feet.

“You have a really nice smile.” She peers at me. “Guess I never noticed that before.”

I shake my head. “Wasn’t asleep.”

“Smiling?” she repeats. Her face settles into a stern frown. “Who are you, and what did you do with that other guy?”

I have to chuckle. “You really don’t want him back. He was a miserable assclown. Or so I heard.”

“I dunno,” Rachel says. “Assclown or not, I kinda liked him.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“He’s really gone?” she presses, a little more serious this time.

I sit back on my cot and run my fingers through my hair. “It’s weird. Maybe. I woke up happy. Really happy.” I drop my hand in my lap. “Dunno why. I forgot what this even felt like.”

“I know why,” Rachel says with a hint of a smirk. She glances towards Prairie, asleep on her cot.

“Shut up,” I say hastily, and I can feel myself starting to blush. Well. There’s another one I haven’t felt for a long time. “It’s not that.” I scuff my feet on the floor. “I mean-” I look over to check that Scott is still asleep. I don’t want him to overhear this. I’d never hear the end of it. “I never thought of any of you guys as people I should care about, I guess. Now… I dunno. I think it’s just… maybe it’s feeling like I don’t have to be alone any more.”

“Thanks,” Rachel says. “I think?”

“You know what I mean,” I say. I look up at her, deadly serious now. “I was a jackass to you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she says dismissively.

“Everything you had to deal with. These last few weeks, especially. You had to do it alone.”

“I wasn’t alone,” she says. “You were with me."

“No, but-” I stand and walk to her. We’re facing each other now. “I wasn’t. Not really. Rachel…” I finally find the words I should have said days ago. “I’m sorry about August.”

She blinks. She might be tearing up. I’m not sure. I’m not close enough to her to tell. “I know.”

“You’ve never been anything but kind. To her, to me. Even him. God knows why.” I wave a hand in Scott’s direction.

“You don’t have to-“

“You don’t deserve to be treated like that,” I say firmly, talking over her, fixing her with a stern look.

“You didn’t do anything,” she says emphatically, shaking her head.

“You’re right,” I press on. “I did nothing. I didn’t ask how you were. I didn’t try to help. I didn’t ask what you needed. I just did… nothing.” I shake my head at her. I can’t believe myself. “Nothing. What kind of assclown-?”

Rachel sighs and cuts me off. “No one’s judging anyone here, assclown. We’re all struggling.”

“Yeah, but we’re struggling together,” I insist. “Or we should be. And I just spent the past year fucking brooding in a bed.”

She has to smile at that.  “You do like to brood.”

“No,” I say softly. “Not really.”

“So then-“

“Starting today,” I say. I hold up my hand, pledging to her. “I’m done brooding.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

I drop my hand again. “I’m serious. If you see me brooding, you tell me it’s not allowed.” I point at her. “Take a note.”

“You realize,” she says, more seriously, “it’s gonna wear off eventually. This euphoria thing.”

I lower myself back down on the floor, beside her cot. “Huh?”

“It’s just you falling in love. It’s normal.” She settles onto the cot, on her stomach, kicking her legs up behind her.

I glance back at Scott’s bed again. “Shush!” I hiss. “God. Why would you-?”

Rachel smirks. “What is this, third grade?” She rolls her eyes up toward the ceiling. “Homer, do you like the girl? Check one: yes or no.”

I rip a leaf off the plant beside me and toss it at her glass. “You’re the worst. If that’s all you got to offer, maybe I’ll just go back to brooding.”

“Wow. Great. You made it all of, like, thirty seconds. I’ll alert the media.”

At that, we both dissolve into silent snickers. I press my hand to my face and rub my eyes shut again. I feel that strange wave of happiness again, warm forgotten pleasure, and now I know. It’s not just the new girl. It’s the old one, too. The one who’s been there all along. The one I never realized has always been there, by my side. _On_ my side. Even when I didn’t deserve it.

I open my eyes and look at her. “Do you remember,” I whisper, “the first time you and me prayed together?”

She nods slowly. It wasn’t long after I arrived. Every night, without fail, on even my darkest days, I would cross myself and pray silently, before I laid down to a night of restless, frightened sleep. Every night, she watched me. She finally called out to me across the cage one night and invited me to join her in her own bedtime prayer.  We knelt together, whispering to ourselves, for the first of what became many nights of shared prayer. For a long time, that was the only way we would talk. I was too scared to say much of anything else. I was too sad to have anything else to say.

“You told me you were praying for a superhero,” I say softly. “Like, Superman or something. To break down the door, and dismantle our cage, and fly us all out of here to safety.”

“You told me you were praying for an angel.”

I lean my head back against her glass. “A guardian angel.” I smile wistfully. “Just to turn this nightmare into something I could maybe survive.”

Rachel glances over at the sleeping Prairie behind me. “Hmm.”

I gesture at the next cage. “You think _she’s_ the answer?”

“I think you want her to be.”

I shake my head. “I told you I stopped believing in God like eight months ago.”

“Why, though? Because your prayers didn’t get answered?”

I offer a heavy sigh. “Because any universe where we’re down here, and that bastard is upstairs doing whatever the fuck he does, isn’t what I was taught about in Sunday School. It’s supposed to be the other way around. So it can’t be true.”

“And yet,” Rachel says. She shrugs and glances back at Prairie’s bed. “God works in mysterious ways.”

I press my lips together for a long, quiet moment. “God wouldn’t want her down here,” I say finally. “That’s not a fair God.”

“Maybe it’s an unfair God, then.”

“You're so Presbyterian.”

“And you’re not really an atheist. Not now.”

I look over at Prairie again. “Agnostic,” I correct her. Is she an angel? She stirs slightly in her sleep, and for a moment I think she’s waking up, but she sighs and settles down. 

“Fine.”

“Was it worth it?” I ask suddenly. I turn around, glancing over my shoulder at Rachel, who is still hovering above me on her cot.

“Was it worth it?” she repeats. “Was what worth it?”

I turn all the way around and lean forward, lowering my voice. “These last few weeks. All the stuff I never bothered to ask you about.”

It takes her a moment to realize what I’m asking. “Was _August_ worth it?” Rachel says in disbelief. She props herself up on her elbows to gape at me, momentarily aghast.

I shake my head quickly. “I need to know. Please. When all this is over, if I go back to hurting all the time like before, am I gonna hate myself? For letting myself get carried away? For feeling something?”

“Don’t put that on me,” she says, her voice sharp and icy.

“Fine.” I rise to my knees and put my hands in the air. “I’m sorry. That’s not fair.” I drop my hands. “I’m just trying to figure all this out. Like, all this time, I knew you were in pain. And out there, I would have been someone who cared. Really. I’m not usually an assclown. But I couldn’t let myself do that in here. I thought once I did, I wouldn’t be able to stop. And now, maybe I can’t.” 

“I don’t regret anything,” Rachel says firmly. “But… Homer, you have to make up your own mind about whether to care about people or not. I can’t do that for you.”  

I shrug. “Well, if it’s that or brooding...”

“Homer Roberts is not allowed to brood anymore.” She points at her palm. “I have the note right here.”

“You’re funny,” I say, surprised. “I had no idea."

“You never bothered to ask.”

A tone sounds and the lights click on around us. “Oh, fuck ooooooff,” Scott moans loudly a moment later as he rolls over and dives under his pillow, trying to steal more sleep.

Prairie sits up, blinking her eyes. I realize after a moment that Rachel is watching me stare right at her. Oh. Am I that obvious? She raises her eyebrows at me, then winks. _God._ I count my blessings that she’s blind.

“Morning,” I call over to Prairie, trying to ignore Rachel, and also Scott.

“Morning,” Prairie says, her voice hoarse from sleep as she stretches in the bed. Her braid falls loosely over her back as she stretches. Something about it makes me shiver. “How long’ve you two been up?”

“Long enough,” Rachel says, staring at me pointedly.

Prairie drops her stretch and turns to us with interest. Her eyes fix on me. I know if I move too quietly, she won’t be able to track me, so I stay put. I want her to know where I am. I’m getting used to accommodating her and her disability, almost out of habit. “Long enough for what?”

“Long enough to turn Homer into a new man,” Rachel finishes.

“Oh yeah?” Prairie asks, raising her eyebrows at me.

“You can both shut up,” I say, feeling myself blush again. _Blind. It’s okay._ “I woke up in a good mood. That’s all.”

“He promised to never be an asshole again,” Rachel pipes up.

“I didn’t promise,” I caution her. “Just today. Today, I’m gonna try not to be completely miserable.”

“That’s a good start,” Prairie says seriously. “Then you can try not being miserable, tomorrow, too. And go from there.” She pauses. “I don’t think you’re miserable.”

“Not this morning,” I agree. “Not with you.”

“Not last night, either.” She takes her hair tie out and shakes the chunks of her golden braid out before starting to thread them back together. Like Rapunzel. _No_. Rapunzel was the helpless girl in a tower.

Like Rumpelstiltskin.

“Last night’s over,” I say firmly, watching her move. “We’re starting fresh today.”

Wait. That’s not right. Rumpelstiltskin was the imp, the trickster. It was the girl who fooled him in order to win her freedom. The princess? No, she was just a daughter. Just a girl. Not a guardian angel. Not a superhero. Just a girl who was smarter than the trickster. Who discovered how to beat him all by herself.

She finishes knotting her braid and climbs to her feet. “What do you want to do today?”

“Spin straw into gold,” I say airily.

“Share some of that crack?” Scott pipes up.

I grin and stand up to join her, ignoring him. “Your hair. It just looks nice in the light.”

“Oh,” she says, and her hands flit to it self-consciously.

“What’s gotten in to you?” Scott asks me, genuinely curious.

I lean against the glass. “Say his name three times and you break the curse.”

“What?”

“Beetlejuice,” Rachel explains, giving me a funny look. “I don’t think that’s going to work here.”

I shake my head ruefully. Again, I feel that strange feeling. Happiness. Connection. Community. A laugh, rumbling somewhere deep inside, not quite making it to the surface. It feels good. “Oh. Guess I got that mixed up with Rumplestiltskin.”

“And that’s supposed to work better how?”

“It won’t,” I say. “But we need to start thinking outside the box, don’t we?” I look at Prairie, who is still touching her braid and looking in my direction with a thoughtful expression on her face. “Might as well get started. After all, we got plenty of time.”

And that doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world any more.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a drabble of a scene in anticipation of Part II coming out next week. Homer, where are you?


End file.
